Get your own Free Home PageAthletic competition has been an opiate of the high school masses for decades, burning, manifesting and scorching within the hearts of student, faculty and fans alike. However, 10 years from now will sports retain that massive stranglehold that it has so masterfully kept on the American public throughout the 20th century?
As the computer age begins its ascendancy, the infrastructure of sports is undergoing major changes too, from the evolution of modern athletic facilities to the alarming trends in performance enhancement. The scope of that change at Smith is not yet known, but the arrival of that change is indeed inevitable.
BLS is known as a crossroads where a medley of ethnic groups convene and the face of the institution is always transforming. Currently, African-Americans are the majority group at Smith, but by the year 2009 Asians figure to be eclipsing that black majority. Accordingly, soccer figures to replace football as the undisputed king at the school. Indeed, football, basketball and track will be in a slow decline and the great 1974 gridiron season and 1996 hoops seasons that produced state 4-A runner-up trophies will seem like very distant memories.
"It depends on what the environment pushes on that culture as to what the prevalent sport is at that time," said Oscar Brayboy, Smith’s athletic director.
"Some of the lower revenue sports could become more lucrative. A prime example is that 10 years ago soccer was almost unheard of, but it was brought in and the kids have enjoyed it."
So it is possible the face of BLS sports could remain unaltered, meaning that immigrants might adapt to traditional American sports.
"They could pick up a baseball or a basketball," Brayboy said.
But this will not the biggest change in sports here. Rather, it will be how student-athletes condition themselves. Recently, the advent of creatine and various other performance enhancers has threatened the purity of competition. Too many high school athletes have started to abandon hard work for the "quick fix" of creatine. The long-term effects of creatine and other supplements remain unknown to scientists. Hence, students are living by a false illusion that creatine is OK for them.
"I think players psychologically feel creatine might give them an edge," Brayboy said. "My main concern is the long-term effects. I think that quite a few kids are using it."
In the darkness of the creatine-made shroud that hovers over the bed that is sports, there is a beacon of light that goes by the name of hard work.
"The ironic part is that hard work over time will do the same thing that these quick fixes will do," explained Brayboy.
Perhaps the most promising means of ridding sports of drug abuse is random drug testing. Adherents of this proposition view it as a Moses leading the honorable of athletic hearts while opponents see it as an infringement of privacy.
"I think that it’s an excellent idea," Brayboy said. "We need to keep the sports as clean as possible. If it means random drug testing, then I’m all for it.
"We have to set standards and we need to abide by those standards."
Another important area is the relationship between athletics and academics. Currently in the Tar Heel State, a student-athlete has to pass five classes to be eligible to play his or her sport, but some question the rigidity of this rule. But it appears that the standards are more likely to be higher, not ;lower by 2009.
"I say they should stiffened," Brayboy said. "The reason I say they should go up is because we need to buckle down academically. We’re not at the level we need to be."
Many athletes are blessed with talent, but they lack the either the grades or the work ethic to advance to the next level. Ten years won’t erase the fact that advancement depends on an individual’s hunger for success.
"How hard you work academically and athletically determines how far you go," Brayboy said.
Major changes in the athletic environment at Smith will include a football fieldhouse, the naming of the gym after Bob McAdoo and a future soccer powerhouse.
"The future is bright for Smith athletics," Brayboy said.
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